ilyse to overturn any of the rules. sixth and perhaps the most striking criticism of all is that we can't afford the new protections. some say regulatory reform is too costly. we say that the costly system is of all one that's prone to collapse. in the absence of the proper protection in effect the absence of the protection that this horned legislation put in place, our system descended into a

crisis that had a tremendous costs to businesses to the economy and to the american people. if we hadn't moved to reform the system we would find ourselves still exposed to a cycle of collapse and prices with potentially devastating repercussions for the nation. but we did reform the system and we need to make sure that agencies have the resources they need to implement the law. the strategy of some critics to be found enforcement or implementation is part of a larger strategy to undermine the statute and weaken the comprehensive reform it puts in place. we cannot afford to let that happen. we cannot afford it because the price of reform is a small one compared to the cost prices. we must invest now in building a strong stable system. there is no responsible alternative because if we don't invest in reform now we from the unacceptable risk we will pay

dearly leader jobs, lost wealth, foreclosed homes and the soundest security of our entire economy. we can't allow that. we all remember the devastation of the financial crisis. we all know that the gaps and inconsistencies in the regulatory system allowed it to occur. we are now engaged in the hard work of fixing the system. we are doing so carefully. we're focused on getting the details right. there will of course continue to be disagreements in the position as we move forward. there will be critics and naysayers. but those who are charged with implementing reform have not forgotten why we needed reform. we needed reform because ultimately a fragile system benefits no one. we needed reform because we can't afford another crisis. we needed reform so that all americans can share and prosperity. that prosperity requires a new system, a balanced system.

a system that is stronger and more robust but one that also promotes innovation, fosters growth and creates jobs. if the system that channels to businesses and to consumers. for much of the last century our financial system was the envy of the world. our system contended balance between strong protections and dynamics, innovative financial markets. eventually we lost the balance. and our system became unstable and fell into crisis. we cannot put that happen again. that's why we enacted dodd-frank to restore the balance, and once again meet our financial system the world's strongest most dynamic and most productive. but to achieve that goal, we must move forward with implementing this law. we are doing so quickly, carefully and responsibly we are continuing to do so in the face of these criticisms, and we will

continue to oppose efforts to slow down, the king or repeal these essential reforms. thank you very much. [applause] so i'm happy to take questions. >> are there any budget cuts that might slow down the progress [inaudible] >> it does provide an increase in funding to those agencies as the president has requested and as we think is critical. going forward obviously as the work of those agencies and others continue, we want to make sure they have adequate funding as i say to do the important work in implementing the statute and doing the following work of the supervision and enforcement to make sure that we can make good on the promise of having

this new system to do so in a thorough way. so i think the cr increases that funding and we want to make sure that the various agencies entrusted to putting all this into effect so doing this work on an ongoing basis continues to have the right level of resources to accomplish those goals. >> [inaudible] >> it was admitted in a recent hearing they had no intention of publishing the term substance of the proposed regulations until the final rule making was published and which denied the public an opportunity to comment i think several lawmakers commented that the publication said basically parroted the dodd-frank back to the comment and i was wondering how you felt that practice comports to the treasury claim of openness and

transparency. >> i'm so glad that you asked that question. the fsoc, i assume you're talking about the important firms and non-big financial firms, the fsoc is already put out an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking asking the public to comment both on the process and on the substance is put out a proposed rule asking the public to comment. we had had in the fsoc number of public sessions. it has continued to declare that its interest in the public input on this and it will continue to find a way going forward to get public input. as you know as it's made clear the firms will have an opportunity to present their views and circumstance in which they are being considered for this occasion, so i would say that if i could just finish -- i would say that the fsoc has been

more transparent than any regulatory body i can think of. it has already asked multiple times for public comment on these questions. it has already said it will seek additional public comment and it has been very clear anyone who is or might be affected by its activities will have an opportunity to make its view heard. so in all of these different ways, the fsoc has been open about what it's doing exceedingly clear that it's interested in the input from everybody that has input to give and i suspect it will continue to find new ways as the process moves forward to do just that. >> [inaudible] , route yes, republican votes to the director. the second question is what

happens if the director has had approval by july 21st? >> as to the first question the statute lays out funding sources for this efp we think it's important to implement what the statute provides and we look forward to doing just that. i think we are already on that path. with respect to the director, i think first of all evil said it has done a fantastic job in her days of starting the process of starting up the cfpb at reaching out to the business community, academic community explaining what the cfpb's plans are and how people should understand its focus on as i said in my talk making sure that there is real and true disclosure for consumers and the set of rules around that. and i think as the president said, he is keen to make a nomination for that position and

i expect he will do so sooner rather than later. sir? >> you suggest the crisis may have been adverted by dodd-frank, but doesn't the rich persist -- doesn't the rich give the repeat the collapse rules or actually implemented and how serious a threat is 1593? >> i think the enactment of dodd-frank puts us anyplace where the structure of our financial system in the supervision or the financial system is in the far longer place than it has been in an awfully long time. gaps were addressed, the capacity for the government to look at and consider and react to systemic risks making sure financial firms have a more substantial set of provincial rules by which to operate and so forth. it is of course true there is important implementation work

ongoing, and as i said in my talks i think, you know the world has criticized us for both going to test and to slow. the statute result a set of deadlines for which the various pieces of the implementation work is meant to ocher but we will do so carefully with obviously the priority being on making sure we get it right, so i think we are in a much stronger, much safer place than we have ever been before with respect to the resolution authority and making it clear no firm is too big to fail but there are of course additional details that the regulators will be providing as they continue the implementation. they've done i think an awful lot in the nine months since the enactment and they will continue on that path until the various bits of the implementation work are completed. but i think there's no question that with the enactment of july 21st last year we've put ourselves in the united states

and a stronger and safer place with respect to our financial system and we had been in a long time and we will get stronger with every day of the further work on the implementation as we go forward. >> [inaudible] >> yes, sir? >> there was a hearing last week on capitol hill which suggested from both democrats and republicans that go back and give a little bit more guidance and what it's doing. to win the stand when you're saying that your ruling that out, ruling out any more delays and designation? >> what i citizen think the fsoc has provided an unprecedented level of opportunity for the public to engage on these issues in a range of ways. but the fsoc will ensure continued to find ways for the public to comment on this process and that at the end of the day firms who are on a

question on this issue will have apart from all the upper teeth to other opportunities will have the opportunity to come before the fsoc and make their views heard and known, so i think again, i think it is an unprecedented high level of public participation and transparency and opportunity for comment both with respect to the process and with respect to the substance and beyond that respect to any firm that wants to be heard on an individual basis, so that's what i'm saying. >> when you were talking of finding new ways to the public to comment does that mean the final rule could be open for public comment? >> i'm not here to sort of make any announcements about exactly what the fsoc rule making will be. that's something that the fsoc has to decide and the fsoc has 15 members, so the fsoc will continue to figure out a path

forward. what i am saying is the fsoc has been remarkably transparent and open to public comment. i would note that there were not that any public comments submitted to some of the request for public comment on and so i think firms that have views or members of the public or others that have the use should feel free to submit those and i suspect the fsoc well as i said earlier continue to find ways to engage with individual firms in the broad public so that about the process and the substance. >> given the concerns of the economy i'm wondering if i can go back to the cost point. how is the treasury thinking abut the net cumulative effect of the 250 rules coming under

dodd-frank? there's no specific mandate in the act i can find that gives treasury the authority but that would be a natural one for the treasury to worry about in terms of the sum total impact, cost and benefit on the economy and jobs. >> as i said in my talk, i think the net effect is we need to do the implementation work that the absence of that kind of structures be six people for dead and this is why i wanted to go back a little bit in my talk of history, what happened in 2008 and in 2009 was enormously costly, vastly more than almost anything else we could imagine, and overwhelmingly more costly than implementing the various pieces of dodd-frank. at the end of the day but dodd-frank will do is put ourselves in the position to have the financial system that is more capable of responding to stress, less susceptible to shock and the kind of dysfunction that we saw, and we

know that when we don't have that kind of strong financial system we don't have those kind of protections, when we don't have those of first cost to the whole of the american economy, individual americans, small businesses, and to the very financial firms that are i think in large measure being heard about the cost of implementing. you know, a lot of them don't exist anymore because of what happened. for them it was catastrophic. and i think so the net seems pretty clear to us. >> i think one of the potential benefits of fsoc is the coordination of the agencies and concluding and that is the kind of collection of data and analysis. thank you. >> i know that the office of the financial research is there and has a lot of authority.

you have any sense of timing and the naming of a director for that group? >> i should start by saying the office of the financial research is hard at work. it's begun to do when you need to do when you're creating a new institution, creating the structure and personnel systems and the ip and so forth. it's also begun the important work of reaching out to the business community, to the academic community, to the regulatory community, and to the counterparts internationally to make sure that its work as well coordinated and that takes advantage of people's in sight. we are very focused on getting a very strong director. the president will have to make the nomination, and we have been working through identify any candidates, and i hope that we will have the president will make an nomination again, sooner rather than later but we want to make sure we get a very strong director. i think it's important that the

work is proceeding in any event and it will continue, and we look forward to the day the police do when it will have a director. >> in the merten shirt? you, yes. >> de dodd-frank act gave the -- the dodd-frank act gave the sec the authority to move forward with the regulation to impose the universal fiduciary retail investment advice and after delivery the report to the congress in january, the two commissioners dissented in house and republicans on the house financial services committee are calling on the sec to a slowdown that rulemaking until more economic analysis is done. is this provision a priority for the administration, and are you

pushing the sec to move forward with that rule making? >> i'm not going to inject myself into an sec rulemaking i think given the dependants would be inappropriate, but i do think that the basic idea that whether you are seeking financial but a voice from a broker-dealer on the one hand or an investment adviser on labor and their health the same standard, the same fiduciary standard how the engage with you is important because for most americans they don't know whether they are talking necessarily to an investment adviser or broker dealer in many cases the same person is acting as one of the other in different guidance. in 2009 the white paper we released earlier in 2009 made clear there ought to be a uniform standard with respect to the fiduciary obligations with investment advisers.

>> i will take questions from -- yes, sir. this will be my last one. >> secure mentioning fsoc has 15 members. there seems to be one vacancy. if you have any indication as to when that voting member is going to be chosen or nominated or named? >> i think quite soon. >> one more question. >> thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

nasa's next to last space shuttle mission is scheduled a week from friday. the endeavor will deliver a spare parts and equipment to the international space station. the final shuttle mission will be in june. from the kennedy space center in florida this briefing is 40 minutes. >> afternoon and welcome to our 134 post flight readiness review

news conference read we are here today to talk about the daylong meeting that i arrived at the decision for the official launch date and here to talk to us about it are nasa's this is the administrator for space operations mr. bill gerstenmaier. >> good afternoon. >> mike moses, the space shuttle launch integration manager. >> good afternoon. >> and light speed, the shuttle launch director. >> good afternoon. >> we will begin with opening comments and they will be happy to make questions. >> we set for april 29 at 3:47 p.m. as the launch time for the mission. we had very extensive review, thorough review today. the things that impressed me the most is that it's still continuing to work issues and look at the vehicle performance on each and every fight just light they would during any normal mission. a good example is on the last

flight when they were doing the construction data they looked at the reconstruction performance and solve some temperature increases in the data around the 502nd point, and that was due to the fact that the ankle was a little bit higher because of the delay and the launch window typically the launch in the middle of the wind with the optimum time but we were at the end of the window when that caused a little bit of steering to be different and that caused additional heating on the wings more than they expected so they went back and they actually looked at the certification models and found a small error in the certification models that some of those out lighting cases were not really accurately model and a model so they went back and to find out we had plenty of margin and then for the remaining flight, they are also going to go take a look at that and actually change the certification model so i think it is attributed to the team they are not just taking the heat and looking at it and saying it's okay. directly understanding but it

means and continue to understand how they can improve the performance of the vehicle and better understand what we are flying. also this vehicle will have more debrief title that is the tougher tile on the bottom of the vehicle we've flown before. we've been putting that around the landing gear doors and the external tank doors to provide a little more degree protection and we've got those additional titles installed and that's good here on endeavor. we also spent quite a bit of time talking about the systems on board the space station and the all seem to be functioning well. we are still continuing to learn a lot about the environmental control system of space station and the water processors. some of the equipment we've been flying will be critical to keep them up and operating and living forward as well as the samples have really been helpful coming back from the station that we can actually understand what's going on with the stations. we also talk about the ex spectrometer. the professor gave a little

discussion on what he hopes to see from his instrument on board the space station. it to see if this matter that occurred in a promising peace and also to look the high-energy particle physics parameters and the super collider will be also another outcome of the ams and the third thing it will allow us to do is to kind of learn more about dark matter which makes it a large portion of the universe which we really don't understand why it's there. or the matter we can't see with the classical instrument. so it was interesting hearing about this. the last thing we spent quite a bit of time talking about was the external tanks. if you remember this was at mastering katrina when katrina hit a portion of the roof came down and struck the tank and we

reviewed in excruciating detail but it's ready to fly, that there is no concerns. we have reviewed all the analysis they showed the tank was certified to go fly. we also talked of the tank from the stringer standpoint and the right material to go fly i think we have. three strong indicators they're the right streeters, material and not the defective materials that was encouraging to us. in the last thing we went over is the tank doesn't have some of the modifications other external tanks have had so we expect to see some loss. if you're in there were we used to lose so much around the office of frost ramps on the hydrogen tank because there was a little by the pen or alignment that would allow some cry yo pumping and in just meant which would cause the film to come off from those areas. we fully expect this to occur on this tank. we didn't make the modifications to do that. it will again be late losses of

foam but we expect to see some in that area. the team also looked extensively at the loss that we saw just below the in our tank region, and we understand or think we understand again why that occurred, and we will see -- have we really done the right things to make sure it's okay the performance was also acceptable and the fact it came off just as we had predicted but the teams went back and the fact it can awfully they actually went back and we did the models and update the risk assessments to make sure they were still okay to fly so it wasn't just saying we lost over and didn't cause any problem it was okay they took a step further and said how big could it be, could it be the difference from slightly different time with any of the cause concern? so they spent quite a bit of time reviewing that to make sure we were comfortable with what we have seen from the last flight. so again we have reviewed everything, spent quite a bit of time talking about all the things and i think the team was unanimous and we are ready to go

fly as i described earlier as it was a very big reach you. mike? >> it was a really good review today from both of the station and the shuttle perspective. just to continue on the external discussion, the 120 to his been called the hurricane ike tank since it went through hurricane katrina. it had to return to flight made like bill said to make it's tiberi to help reduce any debris liberation off of it with the exception of the few areas we decide based on the risk we didn't need to address and then we went and did the etds trigger module although we subsequently got an update that approved the stringer material on the tank isn't of the same family as we had on the last tank and will have on the next one and so it didn't really need that stringer modification but when the time came in the schedule to be able to do that work and have enough time to make the date, we need to move out on doing it without all of the data and then we found out afterwards we didn't need to do

it so they did a good job of just double checking we had plenty of test analysis to show that this modification made the good stringers doesn't change our dynamic for the performance of the tank at all but really what kind of rap set up is it's hard to see because it's around the corner that you might see it in some of the shots there's a door on the side of the in your tank we collected the in your tank access door and it has a logo painted on for the first time ever in the history of the shuttle program we painted a logo. it's a hurricane with the shuttle looking through the eye of the storm and to really try to represent what the tank has been through. but to me more important what it represents is with the externals team has been through. if you think of it we had the tank in new orleans when the columbia accident occurred they looked at it to see what we could do to get it back in that line and start flying again and katrina hit damage to the tank we had to stop work on it and across most of the plant and recover, is what kind of

represents to us emotionally with the tank has been through but more importantly what the team has been through if you think about it katrina did nothing compared to what it did to the people's lives and even to this day they are still recovering from that so and absolutely amazing job by the team. the motto of that group has been to finish strong and they are most certainly doing that probably the issue we have on the last flight but just this tank to get it back into the assets given where it went with its pedigree is a testament to the dedication of the resiliency of the team. to focus on the mission we are going to do, we talked a lot about our timeline this is going to be a complex choreography. a lot of small tasks that have to go when they are supposed to work rip them down and find new homes which makes it a challenge for the operations team and they have a good plan with a lot of back up to be able to handle that. on the flight data after we dhaka to the station we will take the palette out which has a bunch of external zero are you that our spares for the station

and they will still that on the station. on the flight for we will lift out the ams to buy the flight we have the big payloads out of the bag and on the flight data and we are going to leave behind the boom and inspection bohm. this is the extension or we use to do shuttle's and edge protection inspections. we do it on the flight after we get into orbit and make sure we didn't have any damage and then we did a couple days before we land to make sure we didn't have any micromedia tiberi or the impact on the edges were those caps. we are going to leave that behind on station. we left behind with once before. if you remember 123 and 124, that boom came about after some of the modules were built. the japanese, the jim walter was a little too big to have it in the payload bays of the mission before it left the bohm behind after they installed the following mission they grabbed it and used it for their

inspections and brought it back home. we are going to use the same hardware but this time it's going to stay on station and go back to the sts117, one of 19, i can't remember the numbers. but when we were moving the solar ray we used the bohm on the station on as an extension to their reach and do the repair. it is basically why the station said it gives extra reach and can get to some pieces of the station they can't get to right now with the station so that will stay on the station and be modified a little bit so it can be crippled by the station arm. right now it can only gravel in the middle of the bill so we will move that to the end. the center we use are going to stay on but they aren't going to be powerful so they are going to buy pretty quickly and there's no point for them to use the sensors, but the boom will have at sensors at a later date if it becomes necessary and defined in operational reason to do that

right now is basically going to be an extension stick we are going to leave behind on the stations because of that we are going to do just what we've done on sts 123 and 131 when the antenna failed we are going to do the inspection, the final inspection so we will do that again said we've bet twice before it's been very well trend that should go off without a hitch that's going to happen on the 11 and the final will install the boom on the stations and you will see that sequence we do the late inspection and then install the bill on the following day. we talked a little bit about the mission duration we are going to lift off with a 14 they plan. the of two extensions in addition to the two weather and systems we keep from the orbit landing contingencies so we have to mission extension dates and plan on using those we didn't want to commit them preflight

because if something happened that made us want to free address one recanted them so after we dhaka station run flight day five or so the mission management team from the station and the shuttle will take a look at where we are at and the heavy good plan where the extra days will go and we will add those taking it to a 16 day mission but we won't do that unless the main activities are station not fitting that need to be done and we already know they have a whole host of tasks we need to fill in on those days so that will be very helpful and we left off on time we will have plenty to be able to do that. like i mentioned we have four missions. you're going to see us use a new pre-breed protocol. it's a lot like when you are scuba diving the guys that about in the suits to go into the lower pressure we have the suits in the lower pressure rather than atmospheric of the 14.7 sweeny to to purchase nitrogen out of the blood and the pravachol we mainly use these days is called campout.

the night before the two astronauts go into the airlock the lower the pressure just in that airlock rather than the entire station and camp out all night long at that lower pressure, get in the morning, to their activities, get in their suits. this activity basically is called the in the suit light exercise protocol and exercise is a stretch. the morning of the crew doesn't to camp out until the morning of. they will go into their suits and start breathing pure o2 for about 50 minutes, 50 minutes more than they normally would come and then during that time they will do what we call light exercise which is really just very slow flexing of their elbows and legs so they're basically going to bend their knees a little bit, then their hips and arms, i guess, i get exercise is a stretch. they are not really going to do much at all but just to get the metabolic rate up little bit and after that 50 minutes they will have 50 minutes of rest in. as a 100 minutes of breeding has the equivalent of having campout night at a lower pressure.

you still get all the nitrogen out of your system and operationally it's a much more friendly operational system of the protocol than either the of the methods we use. mostly because the crew doesn't decamped out by themselves overnight and you avoid some of the problems like for a simple a false alarm on station would cause the airlock to be repressed which would break the protocol and prevent you from going the next day this will avoid any of those problems. so both the operations team in houston and the crew are looking for to this protocol. we are going to use that as a kind of test run and if it goes well we will use it on the epa for. it's been through extensive testing and approval through both the nasa chain and dependent medical change so it is an approach procedure and we just want to kind of make sure we got the big behind us and we try it on the last couple in case we run into any hiccups. other than that the other thing you will see us do differently we are flying a sensor called storm which is effectively a relative motion sensor there was

going to be flown on o'reilly and we used for automated docking. with a bushel there's a sensor we call tccs it's basically a range finding laser, they have a similar thing but it's a much more active system. so after we undock we will fly around the space shuttle and do our separation and after that we will do a couple more to put those on the profile grand total of four hours we will come back again and closed again on the station using this other sensor, the storm's center better than the tcs sensors and go about 30,000 feet total before we come back in again and if you think about the station will come directly below the station the pitch maneuver with the shuttle we come up it in transition and flies and on what we call the fi board. we are going to come on the bar about 1,000 feet away and then stopped and said it away from there. we don't need to test the

storm's center on this flight is it will be the hands on news of the new technology and to demonstrate the capabilities and docking rendezvouses in the future. after we undock we kind of come back and but the station and head home. all in all like i said its current be a very big mission, pact and exciting one to watch and i'm looking forward to it. but the team is in great shape and i will let him tell you how the team is ready to go come ten days from now. >> thanks mike. the final processing flow is growing extremely well. especially given the extra days we are given by the program, the extra ten days. last night we completed the ordinance installation for the different elements, which separates the orbiter and the different flight elements themselves. that's all clean and good. we get into the pressurization of the high-pressure gas bottles tomorrow night, and rest pretty easy. they come monday and closed doors and a week from right now we will be into the countdown.

>> one thing to mention at the end of march we did have some adverse weather out the launch pad the was reviewed in detail throughout the last couple of weeks or so it in addition to day each element reported out we had a small hail, experienced small hill in the external tank and some high winds those world is positioned perfectly fine to go so no issue from the weather if you hear about. the countdown for as we have a little bit of an offload after the steam load but we hope to launch the window eastern time and endeavor into a panic going well for the final proud and will have a good launch and a good mission. thanks. >> please wait for the microphone, state your name and affiliation and please address to whom you are asking your

question and we will begin with marshall. could you run through the window with a bullet you don't get off on the 29th, and then just sort of refresh that on how the 28 is looking for atlantis and how that's packing up. >> for the launch window we start on the 29th there's an atlas launch coming up on the range on the sixth of may right now so we try if we need to all the way through and including the fourth of may we have to stand down for that launch and we'd have the offload it to take more than the normal 48 hours of the time in lines of the good that if we were stretched out on for some reason we could reload and be ready to go on the other side of that window. depending where they go on the first or second attempt we can come back around the ninth or tenth. there are stations, and docking issues that may or may not have to address if we come back but

somewhere around the ninth or so we would come back for another attempt. we have to wait and see why we were having the problems in the first place before we could make sure and then we could go through the end of may with that window. there's implications for doing so on the station mission we need to make sure we talk about that it's the legal launch force if we needed it. >> and the atlantis processing is going well. we are shooting for may 12th tee cdt and the test on the 27th of june and right now all looks good for the end of june, june 28 for the final flight. >> can you give a status where you are on the budget after the recent budget deal for the shuttle program? how far to push out the 135 tiffin the funding you have available, is that why you are now sticking with your june 28 instead of pushing it out later into the year?

>> it's not a budget driven we take a look at what we need to go deutsch and the change is ready to go fly and the hardware is ready and restrained june 28th is what we've been planning for and if we move quickly technically we are not overly constrained budget wise but there's the bigot advantage of moving the the flight multiple months from the harbor of a the the the standpoint we reviewed in detail the station programs there was no big driver one way or the other sweeting the end of june is about the right time to go fly and we will just continue to follow the processing and crew training and if something comes up that makes us move we will move for me to move so we have sufficient budget to do what we need to do if there's a deadline that you have to get flown or you couldn't pull off any more.

there is party control and we will see where we need to go do but we let the technical data drives where we need to and then work the budget stuff once we understand the technical problems at push where we need to go push it if it needs to move. so if there's not a financial constraint that says exit date we can't fly beyond that date. >> two quick ones from me. could one of you give whatever the risk assessment was for this flight and was curious if this changed the numbers even a little bit. >> i was really looking for the total number and then degree. if you have those in your charts. >> the microliter on number was one and 277. to 79. in your between 275 to 279i will look it up in just a second. that is a little lower than it would be we are doing this

inspection, not only three or four days before landing we are doing it even earlier than that so there's a couple more days we are exposed to the debris that we don't go look to make sure we don't get hit so that makes the risk of a little bit further. the other piece is the inspection coverage we get is not 100% coverage there's a few areas that aren't -- that being a low risk that we can't see so that makes that go up because there's a few areas you couldn't see. from that standpoint the numbers are a little lower but it was a known risk trade with the game of leading the boom behind for the station few drops. one and 275 is the number. >> of the debris on the assets? >> they don't present that one to us. we don't compete that one for flight anymore. >> we looked at it kind of from the overall risk standpoint and we don't see a significant

fly around works for the 135 silbey rf of evaluating that to see if it makes sense and it's kind of part of the overall kind of final mission build or final

timeline tweaks we are going to see if that fits and makes sense. >> i think the russians are supporting. they were supporting this time, but again, with the potential launch of the soyuz coming up, we want to delay the landing consistent with keeping the amount of time we only have three persons on board the station to about the same timeframe as before and they would undock the sole use as part of the term configuration to fly around data and then return potentially to the ground. then with the launch delayed to june 7th, that would allow the longer period on orbit with us at the three crew. we didn't think the was the right thing to do from the station utilization standpoint we want to keep them at six as long as we can so we ask the russians to believe that land in which they have agreed to do to keep the same amount of time down to the three-person crews

of that is why we moved the fly around of of the sts 134 and at the same time have to rush to take a look at the 135 boe we need to look at it from an overall time line standpoint to make sure we don't put too much pressure on the crew with only the four person crew on the 135 so i would say that's normal work in front of us and we will evaluate the next couple weeks. >> we have some reporters in houston so we will take one more question and then go to houston and then come back. >> the times of london. the work force has such a close and respectful bond with the shuttle it seems a very emotional attachment. can you tell us how people are coping with the prospect of the end of the program and what the mood and atmosphere is. it's been consisted the last several months and we know the end is coming and we are dealing with that. that is to put a little bit of a

somber moved, and we are dealing with it and we have sufficient work force to get all the work done and launch this thing and landed and the next one as well. the emotional aspect is very real. it's very difficult to put into words. we are going to able to keep atlantis here and so we're looking forward to that ultimate display and the alternate space ship at the kennedy space center visitors' center. >> abc news, let me give this to mr. gerstenmaier. i'm stuck asking the question did you ever consider moving the launch of april 29th to the conflict with an event that's not happening in this country that's not happening overseas? >> the frank answer is no. i didn't realize when the wedding was until we moved the

launch date and we moved to be essentially because we need it to the conflict with the progress, and we wanted to pick a date that gave us a reasonable number of attempted before we ran into any other conflict and that is how we sat on the 29, a kind of set the date independently you know, we worked the constraints and we were launched constraints and put on the manifest charts wedding constraints, so we didn't factor that into our thinking. >> if i recall correctly, you had a remote power control issue on the trust i think at the end of last week or the beginning of this week and i just wonder if that has any ramifications at all for plugging in the ams?

>> it is some of the rotary joint activities and mgm, and i think i just got a page prior to coming here that they actually reset that with no overcurrent so we are in good consideration. we discussed that pretty extensively at the review and it wasn't going to be impacted to any of our future operations. and then i think last night we lost a camera our pc and it looked like there was an actual shortage we saw the high current event so we will just leave it for the camera and heater and we will do is leave the camera power and will provide enough to heat to keep the component war, so i think that the rcpm will not be an impact and it looks like it was resolved today. and it wouldn't have been even if it wasn't resolved we had plenty of time to work the issue. >> back at the kennedy space center with questions. >> this is either for bill or

night to become like. can give any contribute to it coveting four endeavor come is their anything that comes to mind when you think of endeavor and that it replaced challenger? are there any thoughts in your head where you would think of some words to describe endeavor and its surface and the significant missions that have been accomplished on it? >> for me it's the engineering answer but we are still focused on a mission so to me the best attribute is to get it launched next week and get into orbit of the mission to station and then when it comes back then i will start thinking about what the ship meant and what it's done. it's a pretty big career that gave a packet on the way over and i didn't even have a chance to read some of the history since it's been delivered here and being the youngest ship, you know, so maybe mike has some

thoughts having worked with it more hands-on, but again, i don't mean to take the cheesy answer but we are kind of holding on reflecting until we are done and so they won't be done a couple of weeks for the endeavor. >> for the test flow when we did the testing of the launch pad and the main engines and then the launch of course but with endeavor for the whole flow and last week dana hutchinson, the flow director for the 105 and i went and reflected a bit. there's a lot of views of endeavor almost like a brand new. the top of the wings still look like they just cannot of the factory. and then for me it's like retiring a friend early so we are going to get a good mission just like mike said, and we are going to do the engineering, all the engineering work like we did on the first flight. no changes there and again we

will be able to reflect after she lands and bring the crew home safely. that was the final mission. >> when i look at this mission i think a little bit about the ams and this is a unique payload that is going. we don't typically fly the payload that takes as much money as the cargo bay and the potential science it can return to understand dark matter that lives in the universe and understand these unique high-energy particles that are out there in space. it's going to be tremendously important. so when i see endeavor flying this unique instrument to the space station, this is a pretty unique mission to kind of close out the career. it's not the run-of-the-mill kind of mission. this is a unique chance to see the vehicle to create unique instrument to space that has the potential of returning really earth shattering science to us.

>> aside from the wonderful stuff that is happening with the shuttle on this mission, the public interest of course in the story that market's been through the last several months can you talk about what a roller coaster that's been for the crew and how they've come through that to get to this point ready to launch? >> i can't talk in any specifics, but i will tell you that again the crew has done a tremendous job of staying on focus and being trained and ready to go fly. we originally scheduled to fly this april 19th and the crew was ready to meet that date they were fully trained and they completed their training activities and then when we slept the launch some skills and move some or things but again i will tell you it's a testimony to the entire crew to stay focused to compartmentalized and do what they need to do for this mission. but when you see dhaka eva space

walks these are not trivial space walks at all. especially the one with the ammonia is a big task and mark will play a key role in kind of watching over that task to watch the space walkers as they do those tasks and kind of the the conductor in the sense of watching some of those activities occur from the overall standpoint. and so he will play a key role in all of that and he also plays a key role in the entry and he's done a good job of being trained with all that, so i think the good thing is that they've been able to work together. there's a team and they are about ready to go fly and that's good. >> marsha? >> possibly for either of the two. are there any special accommodations being taken now or any plan in case congress, and gabrielle giffords can attend a launch, to you expect that to be destruction for your team on the launch date? >> from the launch team perspective it will be a distraction. there's a separate team working

at that issue and i'm not quite sure if he's coming or not to be honest with you. i've turned that to other people on the countdown and the launch team i hope she comes but i don't know or not. i've been asked this a million times since the announcement last week were the orders are going so hopefully you will explain and i want to answer any more. why california instead of bringing it back here, why don't they bring it back here? >> you mean landed in california? when it plans it will be fulfilled all kind of hazardous stuff, that haven't been fired yet, in the system, indy 500 apu, hydraulic fluid all over the place. it's not something you hand over to the public in the configurations we need to bring it home and we don't have the facility to do that in california. >> james? >> james dean.

any consideration of atlantis landing in california on its flight on purpose to give it a farewell tour? >> again i will tell you what i asked the team to do. i want us to make the last flights as much as normal as we can. so we didn't plan to do anything special. we will let the weather tell us where we are going to land and do the normal mission planning the way we are. i didn't want to interfere in the team planning. we spent a lot of time, years honing the way we do flight rules, the way we build procedures to the way we build plans and i want to all of these to be done just like the ones we've done before as to the ones at the end, so we made no special what conditions for that and i was asked i don't want to do what you suggested close to the planning stuff like we normally do and it's like a normal flight and we will see

what the conditions drive as we move forward. >> the business of the leading edges and the temperature constraints you went back and reevaluate. you had less margin than you thought or you had more than you thought and i carry this out that plank out. >> the model under predicted what we would see launching it leads in the windows or other words, it was warmer in the actual case than the models would have predicted. >> which the actor will constrained really is? >> it was -- for was plenty of capability in the vehicle beyond what it design standpoint, but what it showed is the certification analysis if we would have counted on that it wasn't picks ackley done or done correctly. and then what's important for that is it's not just case you want to look the transatlantic, you want to look at all the other scenarios to make sure that there is not something from a certification standpoint that we've missed now that we've found the small.

>> it was a tribute to the team and they surprised them and then they didn't just pass them off the kept looking to see without mean to make sure we are really certify for all the conditions we expect to find. >> we will wrap it up with a question from james dean. >> i was just wondering if you could discuss further the extension days, a couple in the last and a couple here. it seems like to kind of underscore the shuttle landing and just cram all we can into the final missions. are you doing a essentially because you can or do these things actually need to get done in a way that is different from what happened tend missions ago? >> what's happened to the space station as we have 17 vehicles that go into the station during this period, so this is a very busy time on the space station. so that takes a lot of time for the crew to handle the atv docking and departure, the eight tv docking and departures and

progress is coming and going. so the crew doesn't have as much time on orbit and we are also trying to focus on the research and do a lot of research. so with the flights are allowing us to defer its civil war oxygen generation system. we have a new system we would like to put in that would control the acidity or the ph into the oxygen generation system. the current filter we have causes too high of the pressure we can't run the pump so we have a low pressure system that we would like to install that is about a four or five hour task to go do that and to install that. we would like to do that during one of these extension days so we can get the shuttle team along with this base team to put it in and get the oxygen generation system fully up and ready to go support. if it doesn't occur during this mission than we could push it off to encrustation crew but that would take time away from the research. so what we are trying to do is identify the tasks that really helps the station in devin and utter configurations we are

taking advantage of the extra work force that comes up with the shuttle to to get advantage of these items and that is why those are pretty important, and if you look at the actual tasks we are putting in, not trivial, they are high priority tasks we have to do probably the next month or two and this allows us to get ahead with those tasks. >> okay. i think that wraps it up. we appreciate you coming today. just want to remind you that the sts 134 activities began here on nasa television one week from today, april 26 at 10 a.m. eastern time with a pre-countdown status briefing. the sts 134 flight crew arrives at the kennedy space center at 12:15 and at 2:00 in the afternoon the countdown officially picks up all leading towards the launch on april 29 that 3:47 p.m. eastern time, and you can keep up with all the activities on the web site at www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

thank you very much. ..

>> president obama promoted his deficit and debt reduction plan today at the northern virginia community college in annandale outside washington. this is a little more than an hour. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] >> hello, everybody. hello. [cheers and applause] hello, everybody.

thank you. [cheers and applause] thank you so much. everybody have a seat. it's good to be back. good to be back in annandale. good to be back in nova. how's everybody doing? [cheers and applause] i want to make a couple of acknowledgments. first of all congressmen jerry connelly is here. dr. george gabriel, the provost of northern virginia community college is here. and the president, bob templin is here. [cheers and applause] it is great to be back. i keep on coming back because jill biden keeps on telling me to come back. [cheers and applause] i tend to listen to her.

either we say vice president joe biden's best quality is of the. so jill couldn't be here today because she is teaching on day and she does not skip past for anybody, including the president of the united states. [laughter] what they want to do is make a quick remark at the top of that i'm just going to open up for questions. this gives me a chance to get out of the immediate environment of washington and hear directly from voters in every conversation with them. i am grateful of the tip time. you know, last week i laid out a plan to get america's finances in order. it was a planned for shared prosperity for shared sacrifice. and shared responsibility. so before i take your questions, i want to talk a little bit

about this plan briefly because it goes to the heart of what is happening at this campus and schools like it all across america. and my plan does things. first, it cut spending and brings down the deficit. we all know how important that is. just like any student on a tight budget, i'm assuming there's accused units on a tight budget year. what do you show of hands as units on the tape which it. last back i've been there. just like you, america has to start living within it means. for a long time, washington that it's like the death if it didn't matter. a lot of folks promised us a free lunch. so i think everybody needs to recall we had a surplus back in

2000. 11 short years ago. the democrat taxes for everybody, including millionaires and billionaires, fought two wars and created a new and expensive prescription drug program and we didn't pay for any of it. and as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a real lunch. so we were left with a big deficit. as i was coming into office we had the worst recession since the great depression and that made it worse because in a recession two things happen. number one, the federal federal government helps out the date, localities to prevent teacher layoffs and firefighters and police officers have been laid off and all of that cost money. it requires more money to provide additional help to

people who have lost their jobs were in danger of losing their homes. the federal government puts more money out but because the recession is taking less money and in tax revenues, so that poses the deficit question. now, if we don't close this deficit now that the economy has begun to grow, if we keep on sending more than we take in, it is going to cause serious damage to our economy. companies might be less likely to set up shop here in the united states of america. it could end up costing you more to take out a loan for a home or for a car because if people keep on having to finance america's debt, and a certain point they have to start charging higher interest rates. we won't be able to afford investments in education for clean energy for all the things

we care about because we know it would help drive our economy and create jobs. so we've got to tackle this challenge. and i believe the right way to do it is to live a to an old-fashioned principle of shared responsibility. that means everybody has either part. so if my plan does is it starts with calming the budget for savings wherever we can find it. we had a good start a few weeks ago when both righties came together around a compromise that cut spending, but also kept the government open and kept vital investment in things that we care about. we need to build on those. and i'm not going to quit until we find every single time of waste and misspent money. we don't have enough money to waste right now.

i promise you we'll check on a cushion. you name it. the finding savings in our domestic and it only gets you so far. we're also going to have to find savings in places like the defense budget. [applause] is your commander-in-chief, i will not cut a penny if it undermines their national security. over the last two years come of that great defense, bob gates, has taken on wasteful spending that doesn't protect their troops, doesn't protect our nation. old weapons systems, for example, that the pentagon doesn't want the congress sometimes keep on stepping into the budget. well-connected special-interest to get this program stuck in the

budget even in the pentagon says we don't need this particular weapon systems. secretary gates has found a lot of ways like that and has been able to save us $400 billion so far. i believe we can do that again. $400 billion even in washington that's real money. that funds a lot of pell grants. that funds a lot of assistant for communities like this one. [applause] will also reduce posters and name and strengthen medicare and medicaid through some commonsense reforms that will get rid of, for example, wasteful subsidies to insurance companies, reforms that can improve care like make it easier for folks to buy generic drugs

for helping providers manage care for the chronically though more effectively. it can reform the tax total so it's fair and simple, so that the amount -- [applause] said the amount of taxes you paid doesn't depend on whether you can hire an accountant or not. and we've also got to end tax cuts for the wealthiest americans. [applause] let me say, this is not because we want to punish success. i suspect they're a bunch of young people in this gym that are going to end up being wealthy and that's good. we want you to. we want you to go out there and start a business and create jobs and put other people to work. that's the american way.

we are going to have to ask everybody to sacrifice and were asking community college to sacrifice. we're asking people who are going to see potentially fewer services in their neighborhood to make a little sacrifice than we can ask millionaires and billionaires to make a little sacrifice. [applause] we can't just tell the wealthiest, you don't have to do a thing. you just sit there and relax and we're going to solve this problem, especially when we know the only way to pay for these tax cuts for the wealthiest americans is by asking seniors to pay thousands of dollars more for their health care for cutting children of head start or doing away with health insurance for millions of americans on medicaid, seniors

in nursing homes or poor children or middle-class families who may have a disabled child, and not just a child. this is not a trade-off but i'm willing to make. it is not a trade-off i think most americans think it's fair, no matter what party you belong to. that is not who we are as a country. we're better than that. so that's the first part of the plan, cutting spending and a way that is shared for us or shared responsibility. but here's the second part of the planned and that's why i'm here at this campus today. even if for making sure the government lives within its means, we still have to invest in the future. we've still got to invest in use. we sought to strengthen middle-class growth economy. we'll have to save whatever we

can until my proposal makes them tough cut to some worthy programs and services that we were in better times they continue to fund. but i'll tell you what i'm not going to do. we're not going to reduce the deficit by sacrificing investment in our infrastructure. we're not going to allow our roads and bridges to grow more and more congested while places like china are building new roads and new airport and thousands of miles of high-speed rail. we want businesses to locate here in the united states of america and create jobs here. we want to make sure america is both to compete. we've got to have the best roles. we've got to have the quickest and the fastest route in networks. that's who we are. we've got to invest governments we've got to invest governments

we've got to invest governments for basic science. that's not a viable choice. america has always in the world engine of innovation and every. that's who we are. that's how we prosper. i don't want other countries to lead in the industries of tomorrow. i want new technologies invented here in the united states. i want new solar panels and wind turbines in fuel-efficient cars and advanced batteries all to be made right here in the united states of america. i want to invest it right here. [applause] i mean, let's just take energy as an example. folks are out there dealing with gas at four bucks a gallon. it's just another hardship and another burden at a time when we're just coming out of

recession that things are already pretty tight for folks. now, whenever this happens, just like clockwork, you see politicians go in front of the cameras. both say they've got a three-point plan for two buck a gallon gas. the truth is the only real solution to helping families that pump in the medium and long-term as clean energy. as i will save families running and reduce dependence on foreign oil. we've got to develop new to allergies to lessen our reliance on a fuel that is finite in the we've got to import from other countries, including some very unstable parts of the world. and that's why i think that cutting clean energy investments by 70% -- 70%, which has been proposed by some in congress would be such a mistake.

finally, and i know this is near and dear to your heart. we're not going to reduce deficit by cutting education. [cheers and applause] in a world where our students face stiff competition and students from other countries. why would remake it harder for you to compete? we see why it matters right here. more than 10,000 students at this college, at this college a lot are relying on l. grant to help pay their tuition. it's almost 3000 students at the annandale campus alone. 3000 didn't just at this campus. how many of you in the audience have gotten a pell grant to help you pay your way?

how many of you can't afford to pay another $1000 to go to school? i know what this is like. scholarships help make it possible for me and for michelle to go to college. it's fair to say i wouldn't be president if it hadn't been for somebody helping me be able to afford college. that's why you think would be such a huge mistake to ballot the budget on the backs of students by cutting scholarships by as much as a thousand dollars, forcing students to go without them altogether. i just spent the last two years meek insurance that is giving subsidies to banks, we were giving that money directly to student in the form of more grants and better grants on their loans. all the work we've done over the last two years. that's not a smart way to close our deficit.

[applause] so that the bottom line. just as it would undermine our future to ignore our deficit, you would also undermine our future to ignore the promise of students like you. can people come to the school to get a degree in the hopes of living a better life, giving your children and grandchildren the better life. that's the core of the debate were having right now. both democrats and republicans agree that we should reduce the deficit. in fact, there is general agreement we need to cut spending by about $4 trillion over the medium term. and when folks in washington agree on many income and that's a good sign. so the debate isn't about whether we reduce our deficit.

the debate is about how we reduce our deficit. my view is we need to live within our means while still investing our future, cutting where he can while investing in education, investing in infrastructure and strengthening the safety net provided by programs like medicare so they are there for this generation and next generation. [applause] and here's the good news. i believe democrats and republicans can come together. it won't be easy there's going to be fierce disagreements. shockingly enough there will be some politics but along the way. there'll be those who say that word too divided, that the partisanship is too stark but i'm optimistic.

i am hopeful. both sides have come together before. i believe we can do it again. and here is why this is important. ultimately this debate is not just about numbers on a page. it is about making sure you can meet the most of your futures, the you can find a good job and achieve the life you are studying for it in a nation that is prosperous and rich with opportunities for anyone who's willing to work hard to get ahead. that is my focus. that's what i think about first thing i wake up in the morning and when i go to bed at night and that's what they think about all the hours in between. that's why i'm going to need your help. this is probably my most important message today. i'm going to need your help. i can't afford to have all of you as high standards in this debate. i want everybody to be in the game. i want you to hold me accountable. i want you to hold all of washington accountable.

there is a way to solve this deficit problem in an intelligent way that is fair and shares the sacrifices that we can share opportunity all across america. but i can't do that if your voices are not heard. her powerful voices in washington, powerful voices in washington that will reduce. if you are not hurt, that's exactly what will happen. if you are hurt, then we're going to meet this challenge. we are going to secure our future and make our country stronger and more prosperous than it's ever before. with that i want to take some questions. thank you very much, everybody. [applause] thank you. thank you. thank you.

testing, there we go. we've got some people in the audience, our wonderful volunteers with microphones. when i calling you, if you could introduce yourself in the way for the microphone so we can all hear you the miniature juicier cells and try to keep the questions coming in no, relatively sure. i will try to keep my answers relatively short. and i'm going to go boy girl, boy girl, just to make sure things are fair. all right, let me start with this young lady right there. that's right, you. yes, you. i'll call on you, too. go ahead. >> my name is added so and i'm

i'm a student here at nova. i'd like to know your plan to cut $4 trillion in the next 12 years and is any of that towards the education budget? >> no, you know what we've done is we have actually said that even as we are making on this pending cuts, we actually think that education spending should go up a little bit. [applause] and the reason -- the reason is not the money solves all the problems in education. it does that. but whether it's k-12 or higher education, money does make a difference if it's used intelligently. so for example, what were you doing at the k-12 level is we've designed a program called race to the top and it's a pretty

straightforward program. but it says to school districts and states all across the country is in addition to the usual money you get for disadvantaged kids come the usual money you get for disabled kids have most of which that is given out of formulas, so it just depends how many kids are there and how many kids are disadvantaged or disabled, were also going to have a little bit of money that we save to give to schools and school districts that are really digging deep to reform themselves and to find new ways to improve performance. so if you are doing a great job in recruiting and training new teachers, if you are doing a great job in lifting of schools that are underperforming and there are about 2000 schools in the country that are what are

called dropout -- is. they're just not doing the job. so if ms to you say we've got a special plan to make sure those schools are doing a great job. if you've got innovative programs in math and science education, if you're doing some things that increase accountability, improve accelerants, then we're going to give you a little extra money, but you're going to have to reform to do it. so the idea is not just spending more money for it down, it's time more money to improve performance in real reform. thus overturning k-12. now, what we're doing at the community college and university levels is we've redesigned some of the programs like i'll grant programs. it used to be that the student loan programs used to go through banks and they would skim billions of dollars in profits,

even though they weren't taking any risk of the federal government was giving team loves. swingset lusciously's money directly to the students. that will give us an extra several billion dollars we can use to provide all of you additional scholarships, higher levels for programs, but were also working with community college to see, can we make sure the programs at the community colleges are a suspect it is they can be and provide the training and skills you need to succeed. so for example, one of the things we're doing is identify where the jobs of the future? to make it the businesses to help design curriculums ahead of time so young people when they go through and taking out loans are making big investments, they know there's going to be a job at the end of the tunnel. so we need our money, but we

also need more reform. and in order to provide more money for education, were having to make some cuts in some other areas that are going to be difficult in some cases. i just mentioned the defense budget, for sample. you know, there were certain aspects of the defense budget that i will not touch. for example come and make ensure troops have the equipment they need to be safe, making sure that -- [applause] making sure that when they come home, veterans are getting the help they need for posttraumatic stress disorder were to be allowed to go to college themselves. there are certain commitments we make to our men and women in uniform that are sacred and we can't cut back on us. as i said, there's some weapon

systems that just don't work. there are some that may work, but we don't need. there are some that we just can't afford. some are going to have to make some difficult decisions on some of those issues. and let's face it, there are also social service programs that don't work. one of the things they would say is if you're really progressive, you've got to be willing to examine whether something that you are paying for is actually working. if it isn't working, the money could be used somewhere else still people. so we've got to have a much more rigorous review of how affect to the programs are. some work and some don't. if they don't work, we should eliminate it and put it into programs that do. okay? abbé, the gentleman's churn rate that they are.

>> mr. president, i've lived overseas for the last 15 years in very good medical care, but now that i'm in the states and on medicare, i find something interesting in that is that medicare won't pay for any expenses overseas. it has to be here in this country and that costs you money, the government and cost me money, but it is of course for the health care industry. would you be interested in changing that? >> well, i think you're raising an interest in point. first of all, medicare is one of the most important killers of our social safety. [applause] and so before i get to your specific point, i want everybody to understand what the debate right now about medicare is taking place between democrats

and republicans is because you're going to need this as this debate unfolds with the next several months. the house republicans just passed a proposal and their main plan to reduce our long-term deficits and debt is to turn medicare into a voucher program. what would have been would be good right now seniors was there on medicare, you basically are able to get the care that you need and medicare covers it for you. what happened on this proposal is to get a set amount of money. you can then go on private marketplace and his insurance, but if the voucher you were getting worse for six or $7000 the insurance company said it's

going to cost you $12,000, well, you're going to have to make up the difference. and so it's estimated by the congressional budget office, which is an independent high partisan sort of referee in congress that determines these things, they figure seniors would end up paying twice as much for their health care as they are currently. at least twice as much. and more importantly, it would get worse over time because health care inflation goes up a lot faster than regular inflation. so your health care costs keep going up and up in a period the voucher doesn't each year, more and more costs come out of pocket. now i think that is the wrong way to go. that would fundamentally change medicare as we know it and i'm

not going to sign up for that. having said that, we are going to have to reform medicare and our entire health care system in order to improve quality for the amount of money we spend because we spend much more money in this country on health care than any any other industrialized country and our outcomes are better. and that's what we started doing with health care reform last year. essentially what we said is let's not just dump these additional costs on seniors. i mean, it's not hard to save the government money if you're willing to say here, you pay for it. that's not a solution. the question is how do we make health care cost more overall? that means that we work with providers to say, how can you do a better job providing care to the chronically ill?

about 15%, 20% of the patients account for 80% of the cost because they have chronic illnesses like diabetes, can we incentivize providers, doctors, hospitals to do a better job monitoring those illnesses, preventing illnesses, trypanosoma says in a comprehensive way because of the overall cost of the system to go down. can we stop with the five or six tests, all of which cost money to be one test and have the results e-mailed to everybody you need to do with. i can see this money. so there are a whole host of steps that we can take that could make a big difference in reducing health care costs over well. keep in mind, even if you're not on medicare, the overall cost of health care are being driven up for you and even if you're on

private health care, you're paying about a thousand dollars per family in extra costs because of all the uncompensated care that comes in, all the folks who show up at the emergency room, all the medical errors that take place in hospitals and end up costing money as a whole. if we can squeeze those inefficiencies out of the health care system, then we can maintain medicare as we know it, but still reduce the cost to the federal government and to everybody in society. now, the we don't need any health care do we? [laughter] to get to your question then, my preference would be that you don't have to travel to mexico or india to get cheap health care. i'd like you to be able to get it right here in the united states of america, that's high

quality. [applause] so before we went on the path of you can go somewhere else to get your health care, let's work to see if we can reduce the cost of health care here in the united states of america. that's going to make a big difference. medicare is a good place to start because medicare's is such a big purchaser. and if we can start changing how the health care system works inside of medicare, then the entire system changes. all doctors, hospitals will adapt these best practices. the same is true, by the way, for prescription drugs. one other thing we want to do as part of our health care reform package is let's start doing a better job of negotiating better prices for prescription drugs here in the united stated so that you don't feel like you're getting cheated because you are paying 30% more for 40% more

than prescription drugs in canada or mexico. reimportation is a short-term solution that a lot of seniors are resorting to. but why should drugs invented here in the united states end up being more expensive in another country? reason is because track companies can get away with it to your and we should change some of those systems to make it cheaper for everybody here. that could make a huge difference in terms of reducing the deficit. thank you. all right, the young ladies turn right here. hold on. can we get a makeover here or do i need to lend her my night? >> thank you, mr. president. i am in need of christ and, if a student here at northern virginia community college. i did my second career now. my question isn't about 15 years i'll be eligible for medved -- social security and i am part of

the baby boomer generation and i don't know if there will be social security when i get ready. i probably will retire for another 25 years. >> yeah, you look pretty young. you look like you've got a lot of career left in you. >> yeah, so i think another 25 years i'll be working, but i don't know if it will be there when they need it and i'm concerned about that. >> when they talk about social security. the big drivers of our deficit are health care costs. i mean, the thing that we've really got to get control of his medicare and medicaid. that is what is sky rocketing really fast is not only is the population getting older, but health care costs are going up a lot faster than people's wages and salaries or tax revenues to the federal government. social security is a problem,

but one we can solve much more easily. so the first answer to your question is social security will definitely be there when you retire. [applause] i am absolutely confident about that. i am absolutely confident about that. now, here's the thing. if we don't do anything on social security, if we just don't touch it at all, then what would happen if by the time you retire or maybe just a couple years that you retire, you might find incentives getting every dollar you were counting on, you are only getting 75 cents out of that dollar. because what is happening is the population is getting older and there's more retirees per worker and more money starts going out than is coming in. so we do have to stabilize

social security's finances, but we can do that with some relatively modest changes, unlike health care where we fight to get into work with providers, you know, really get much more substantial reforms. the social security, it's just a matter of tweaking how it currently works. politically, it's hard to do. politically it's hard to do. for example, i'll give you an example of a change that would make a difference in social security. right now you only pay a social security tax up to a certain point of your income. so a little bit over $100,000 in your social security -- you don't pay social security tax. now how many people are making less than $100,000 a year? don't be bashful. the point is for the vast majority of americans, every

dime you earn you are paying financials of security. but for warren buffett, he stops paying a little bit over $100,000 in the next 50 billion he's not paying a dime in social security taxes. so if we just made a little bit of an adjustment in terms of the cap on social security, that would do a significant amount to stabilize the system. and that's just an example of the kinds of changes we can make. [applause] so we are going to have to make some changes in social security, but it's not the major driver of our deficit. and when i proposed is, let's work on social security, but let's not confuse that with this major budget debate we are having about how we deal with both spending and revenues

because that is the problem that is going to require some really hard work it's a bipartisan cooperation. all right, gentlemen -- gentlemen in the white shirt in the middle. three guys right road. >> mr. president, may challenge to mr. here at nova and i am really concerned about the clean energy solution because with the deficit we have, most of the solution at alternatives are far more expensive than the things we have now. so how are we going to reduce the deficit and at the same time develop clean energy alternatives as well as removing the current system we have in place that are dependent on oil and other things from other countries? >> well, it's a great question. [applause] let me start with gas prices

because i know that's on everybody's mind. you can sit down. [laughter] i'll admit to you, it's been a while since i filled up at the tank -- filled up at the pump. you know, secret service doesn't let me get out. they don't let me drive anymore. but it wasn't that long ago that i did have to fill up my gas tank and i know that if you've got a limited budget and you just watch the hard-earned money going away, the oil companies will once again probably make record profits this quarter, it's pretty frustrating. if you're driving 50 miles a day to work and you can afford to buy some fancy new hybrid car,

so you are stuck the old heater that is giving you eight miles a gallon, that's pretty frustrating. now, i wish i could tell you that there was an easy, simple solution is nice. it is true that a lot of what is driving oil prices up right now is not the lack of supply. there's enough supply. there is enough oil a year for world demand. the problem is that we'll do is sold on world market and speculators and people make various bad and they say you know what, we think maybe there is a 20% chance that something might happen in the middle east that might disrupt oil supplies, so we're going to bed that oil is going to go up real high and that spikes up prices

significantly. we are now in a position where we can investigate if there's unfair speculation. we're going to be monitoring gas stations to make sure there isn't any price gouging taking advantage of consumers. but the truth is that it is a world commodity and when prices spiked up like this, there aren't a lot of short solutions. but we have our medium and long-term solutions. now, one solution is making sure we are increasing production of u.s. oil. and we have actually continually increased u.s. production so u.s. production is as high as it ever been. the problem is we only have about 2% to 3% of the worlds oil reserves and we used diapers.

so when you say we should be using traditional sources, the problem is we've got finite sources when it comes to oil. and that means we got to find some replacements. there are a couple of alternatives. one, are biofuels. i was down in brazil. a third of their cars are run on biofuels, mostly at the mall made out of sugarcane. we should be able to develop to ologies where we are building more efficient i/o feels overcurrent using. right now we use most of our ethanol comes from corn. it would be better if we could get farmers to work with industry to figure out whether we can use wood chips or algae were switchgrass or other, you

know, other biomass that could create fuel that is competitive with gasoline. so that's point number one. point number two is we should be looking to elect their cars and how can we produce more effect to the lack of cars, cheaper electric cars here in the united states. technologically it's not feasible to get a car that runs on 150 miles an hour or maybe no gallons of gas and you just get your car, plug it in at night in your garage. whatever energy is stored in your car battery goes back into your house and when you come back out at night, it's recharged and you're ready to go. you are right right now that hybrid cars and electric cars are more expensive than electric cars, but partly because we have

an increased demand, that the unit costs have gone down. the more you produce or something, the cheaper it gets. you remember what it used to cost you for a flatscreen tv or laptop computer, but is volume. that, technology improves, costs go down. well, the same thing to be true for electric cars. the things return to do is increase demand of electric cars. it turns out the federal government has a lot of cars. so we're saying let's have the federal government make sure 100% of our cars are energy efficient cars to create a better market for those cars that can help drive cost down. we've also increased fuel efficiency cars for the first time in 30 years. that will save about 1.8 william gallons or barrels of oil, and

billion barrels of oil. we can now increase fuel efficiency standards on cars and trucks and that could make a huge difference because now consumers are just, whenever they go buy a new car, by necessity the car will have higher mileage standards. all that drives down demand and to reduce gas prices overall. but there is one last component that you just pointed out. if were going to have electric cars, we still have two of electricity. and how do we produce electricity? now with true that paul was something that is very plentiful in america. we are sort of the saudi arabia of coal. the challenge with coal is although it's very cheap, it's also dirty and it can create the type of air pollution that not only is contributing to climate change, but also creating an

asthma for kids nearby. now in that stuff in is not a deal. so what we said is let's invest in clean and cool technology that potentially can capture some of these particulars in the atmosphere. if we can do that in an energy and cost efficient way to my bed is usually to us. but we also have to look at other ways of generating electricity. it is true that the learned with great power marks the death of coal, for example, or natural gas. but that doesn't mean it will always be the case. it means we haven't developed technology to maximize our ability to capture and store electricity through those means. i just mentioned natural gas. we have a lot of natural gas here in this country.

the problem is extracting it from the ground, technologies are developed as we like and so there are some concerns that it might create pollution in our groundwater, for example. so we have to make sure if we do it, we do it in a way that doesn't poison people. the point is there is not going to be any single silver bullet. we have to develop all these energy alternatives, all of them will require investment in new ways of thinking, science, research and typically no single company will be making this the best because it's not profitable for them to do it. that means the federal government historically has said that it had come you know what, we'll make this an investment in basic research and make someone else commercialize. that's how we invented it.

so we invented the gps system. and so invented the barcode. those rossetto investments but eventually spread out throughout the economy and made everybody richer and better off. and that's all you got to do with energy as well, but that requires investment prepared you think we all should be. [applause] thank you. all right, it's the young ladies turn right there. >> hi, mr. president and dr. rebecca hayes, history professor. my question is, you incur should see more more of the bipartisanship like the gangs are increasingly addressing the concerns you've mentioned. you think we'll see more and are you going to try to stay behind it? >> well, i am encouraged that

over the last four or five months, we've been able to strike some deals between democrats and republicans that a lot of people did next is best to be able to do. you know, our conflicts in our disagreements tend to give more attention than our agreements. and you know, the easiest way to be on tv is to call somebody a name. i mean, if you say something mean about somebody, that will get you on tv. if you say something nice, you figure that's boring. i'm not interested. so i think that there is a huge opportunity for us to work together, particularly on the deficit issue. as i said, we now agree that it's a problem.

everybody agrees it's a problem. everybody agrees about how much we have to lower the deficit by over the medium term and that we've got to deal with long-term health care costs in order to get this under control. so it's pretty rare where washington says this is a problem. everybody agrees on that and everybody agrees how much we need to do to solve the problem. the big question that is going to have to be resolved is how do we do it? and there is -- i don't want to lie to you. there is a big philosophical divide right now. i believe you've got to do it in a balance world. i believe you've got to have spending cut, but she can't cut things like education or basic research for infrastructure down to the bone.

i believe that people will have been well it last in a society like me and have come you know, a very, very good income can afford to pay a little bit more, nothing crazy, just go back to the race that existed when bill clinton was president. i wasn't that long ago. [applause] that is the fear and to do, especially if it makes sure seniors are getting medicare and kids are still going ahead there. why wouldn't i want to make that sacrifice? look, i think most wealthy americans feel the same way. i want to live in a society that's fair, not just at a charitable reasons, but because it improves my life. if there are young people a year who are going to get close and have opportunity, if i'm not,

you know, driving by feeding homeless folks on the street, you know, why wouldn't i want to have a society where he knew the american dream is available for everybody? so the question is, how do we achieve the same goal? can we do it in a more balanced way? and the house republican budget that they put forward, they didn't just not ask the wealthy to pay more. they actually cut their taxes further. now, you know, we just had taxi and nobody wants to pay taxes. tax form and i thought, you

know, there was a moment there where you look at the figure you are paying it's a well, let me think about my position on taxing the wealthy here. [laughter] i understand that. nobody volunteers and so the boy, i'm just wild to pay more taxes. but it is a matter of values and that we prioritize and i certainly don't think that taxes should be even lower. you know, i think america wants smart government. they want to leave government. it wants accountable government, but we don't want no government. according to the republican budget that was passed, for example, would have to eliminate transportation by a third. remember when that bridge in

minnesota collapsed with all those people on it? and there was a big cry, how can this happen in america? well, the national society of engineers, dave looked around and they give us a d. when it to infrastructure. our roads, bridges, sewers systems are all deteriorating. we don't even have a serious high-speed rail infrastructure in this country. our broad ban lancers lower than places like south korea. so what. we cut transportation by another third and what's going happen to america? were just going to have potholes everywhere? were just going to have bridges collapsing everywhere? are we going to canoe to have

airports that are substandard or we going to other countries and suddenly realized that china and south korea in all of europe all have better infrastructure than we do everything businesses will come here in the best? or do we think at some point come me say, you know what, america has a second-grade infrastructure and it causes too much money because their trucks are going over the potholes and getting messed up. ..

we can come up with a compromise that is effective, that puts america's fiscal house in order but also allows us to win the future. that's my goal. i'm going to need your help there. thank you, everybody. thank you. ♪ ♪

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from a conference on

now a discussion on minorities in the news media and popular culture. speakers include film director spike lee and hip-hop on demand chairman and ceo will griffin. this is part of a conference on race in america posted by the aspen institute from. from the museum in washington, d.c. this is an hour and a half. >> i'm urging people to kind of move up front. take a seat.we've

just to remind you we have looked at different contexts for our look at racial questions, he and we've gone through the palm nowily and politics and in thed last session the institutions, and now basically a public medi sphere, the media and popularck culture and i turned back over to richard lui.you, >> thank you, charlie. what a great panelt panel todayk about this. donna byrd here, thank you for being here today. will griffin, thank you, present ceo of hip hop on demand as well as spike lee, founder of 40 acres and film works that everybody knows. what a great panel to talk about the subject today. as you know, the entire subject we look today in the state of

race in america. i want to start by asking you what the state of race in media is. if you could give me your thoughts, and spike, by the way, i forgot to mention, he has to leave at 4 for a plane to catch heading up to new york, and there's a reason for this, and you can explain what you have to be there for. >> well, i have to be there for my man. tonight, chris rock is making his debut on broadway. the name of the play is -- please excuse me for leaving early, and i thought i would be in the earlier panel, but i have to leave, so please excuse me, thank you. >> i wanted him to announce the name of that play. [laughter] spike, you're doing that. why don't you start then for us, how about that? your feelings about the state of

race and media. >> to be honest, it seems like there's panels like this forever. we're discussing the same thing over and over, oveh, over and again, and you know, what is really -- i mean, we have, i mean, what's been done is magnificent, but if you look at the -- i'm really talking about hollywood and networks and cable television, you know, the -- it's kind of -- >> are we in a better place you think in >> than what? >> than before because you said we've been talking about this over and over and over again. >> look what's on television, and i mean, is there a cosby

show now? i think that this reality show is going to bring about the down fall of western civilization. [laughter] these reality shows are unbelievable to me, but i just think that -- and it's something i said before. we can do a lot of stuff up dependently, but we're -- independently, but we're talking about the institutions, hollywood, and television you can break that down into network and broadcast. unless we become the gate keepers of, it's not going to change. the gate keepers are the people who are a very select few, again, in hollywood and in television, radio, and television is broadcast network, these select few decide what's

going on and what's not going on, and there's not one person of color that i know of that is a gate keeper, and what i just said, and you cannot use will smith and denzel because even when will wants to do a film, he still has to call amy pascoe and say i want to do this fill. . of course with him the biggest star in hollywood, of course they say yes, but he still has to go to anyone and say this is what i want to do. we're not in a room. quick analogy. when "master minds" and an unnamed studio decided they wanted to do a film called "soul

plane" there was no one in the room saying wait a minute, can we just talk about this? ask american airlines, they go put rims that spin on the plane, hydraulic wheels, snoop's the captain, there's a pole in the back, and we serve fried check and malt liquor. no one in the room to say wtf, wait a minute, that's not a good idea. [laughter] we're not in those decision making -- these studios every quarter, they sit around a room and people have green light votes, and they look at the budget. they look at the script, they

look at how much money they think they can make overseas, and they vote on what film they're going to make and which film they're not going to make, and we're not in those positions yet. >> how do you get there? >> well, the thing about film is there is no one way to anything. i mean, you could be a hostess at a restaurant and working at being a head of a studio so it's not like you do this, this, this, this. it's like it's this and that, and i think the number one, we have to delegate. i think the time has to come where african-american artists can't be making art and also be

raised in the film too. there's enough african-americans and hispanics coming out of business, staff ford, howard, nyu, coming out of warton school at penn, and i mean, that's not my -- i don't know how to do that business. i just try to do art, and as the artist to also raise the money and come up with a business plan, and if they said, spike, i want you to give me a business plan for x amount of dollars for slater films. i can't do that. i just think we have to get people -- your jobs to do this, leave the art to the artists, and just get together. >> all right. great way to kick it off. will, what would you say? >> i think a, hollywood in trouble; right?

and hollywood is in trouble and the black artists within hollywood are caught up. it's just a dead end to what that system is. we talk quite a bit about this. they have to deal with technology, changes, they have to deal with competition for the consumer and bootlegging and they what are focused on is films and that's about what happens at the studio. now, there is an example, and we didn't talk about this, of somebody when you are a black filmmaker they expect you to be the artist and the entrepreneur at the same time. you have to produce the movie and make the money. that's the green light. in the real world that's almost superman; right? you got to have it or woody allen before that, these are

amazing filmmakers because they can raise the money. they'll bring us a film ready to go, and we just have to put it in theaters. that's the expectation of african-american filmmakers. today, it's just too big. we did a show called a reality cosby show. >> i love that show. >> thank you. there's only a companies that buy it, abc family would have bought it, and then mtv ultimately bought it. it's not like a huge market. the wb didn't want it, abc, nbc, they were not trying to do it. i think the biggest issue is there are no standards now for the content, and especially as it relates to african-american content, and one of the things it was -- we need the apollo

project if african-american media which is a total rethink to say 10 years from now which is what president kennedy looked at years from now is we're going to be on the moon, reaching these points, and the best thinking towards having that goal. i think if we thought 10 years from now or 20 years from now when we look back and said first african-american president, a real life cosby show in the white house; right? i mean, a reality has outstripped imagination of the possibilities, and i think rethink of the media industry would say how do we -- how do we extend our imaginations beyond, you know, the reality of our society. if people look back 20 years from now, what would we want to say we were about? what did we record on television? what did we put out on film? how did we represent ourselves

in our times, you know? when you look at news, where is the new ed bradley; right? he left a few years ago. we lost something. i think about the investigative journalism show. i remember abc and food lion thing and remember that where abc undercover reporters go in the food line and realize that the meat was bad, the way it was prepared was hoosh, they dropped it on the floor and washed it off, and i look at today's society and i look at the tea party in the way it's covered. people cover it play by play. i was like who is going to go out there and tell us the meat is bad? right? the ed bradley who is going to do that for our culture and go out there and cover it, and i think at the end of the day to ask somebody to go raise money and say do the job that the state is supposed. no, the state is supposed to do

it. that's the responsibility of the news media. that's your obligation to the electorat. i feel the same way towards television. there's a responsibility to produce things that will uplift the civilization, that match the values in the society overall, and i think we have to demand that, and i think it's good business. the first studio that stands up and says, you know what? i'm not going to be in just like the last five movies business. i put in half a billion dollars over ten years or a billion over five if you want to get crazy aggressive. you got to bring me along because spike already said he can't give the money. [laughter] come on. [laughter] >> a billion dollars, and you say we are going to be committed to films for this audience and this market and we are going to make them work.

it would capture the united states as a community and would be successful in the market. >> real quickly -- >> yeah. >> the thing that we're forgetting is that the united states census bureau has said by the year 2035, and some states it might be quicker, white americans are going to be minority in this country. any business in this country that does not take that into account starting today or last month and wait to 2035 is going to be extipght. this country is becoming brown, and if you continue to operate with leave it to beaver and audrey and harry, it's not going to work. 2035 white americans, and i

don't make this up, the united states census bureau, white americans are going to be the minority in the country, so that's reflecting not just dealing with media, not just how you portray the media, but also the decision makers. you just can't have -- you got to give the people who make the country give them jobs in meaningful positions too. >> a part of that fabric you bring up here spike and mona is middle americans. >> i'm glad he touched on both entertainment and news because when it comes to both and the many hats, to rip off the hat -- >> his hat was different. >> very different. [laughter] >> for people like me who wear many hats and i'm of arab dissent and here in the u.s., when it comes to the news media, it's lazy. first of all, as a white american, you can talk about everythingment you are an expert

on everything, and i'm fresh off talking about the egyptian revolution on various media outlets, but also talking about that because i was born in egypt. ask me to talk about the libya revolution even though i'm tennessee expert in both countries. they go to the white academics who said this would never happen, and as it was happening, they said it's not going to work out. they continue to tell you these arabs love dictators. i don't think they are going hello, can i talk? nobody is listening. they go to white experts. it's frustrating on that level. when it comes to my muslim hat, where do i start? muslims were not invented on 9/11. everybody acts like we were. the muslim experience goes back centuries in this country. never talk to a black muslim in the country because they want

the foreign muslim experience. my citizenship is official tomorrow. [applause] >> we should have waited a day. [laughter] >> should have waited. [laughter] >> but you know, to me, there's a bunch of other muslims of foreign dissent because it's easy to make that connection. with a muslim experience in the u.s., it was the voice of pakistan. what is it about americans who have been in this country for centuries. i'm relieved that the muslim congressman in this country was representative keith alison. he's african-american and his family has been here for centuries. you cannot say he's a foreigner. this is a muslim experience on media, and when they go to the

foreign muslim, it's the elam, the most conservative example of the muslim experience. hell lee, talk to -- hello, talk to me. 20% of muslims in this country go to mosque and identify with this conservativism that you see on tv, and yet they go to the very conservative man or a woman in a head scarf. on every count i lose when it's to talk about international news issues i lose because the white analyst knows more than i do. when it's my muslim experience and the muslim experience of, you know, you tell people that the documentation, muslim tradesmen in the country centuries ago and say islam came from slave ships, people go what? all they want to know is that 9/11, islam, what does that mean because it's very comfortable to keep islam the foreign element in the country. it's 10 years after 9/11, have

we learned nothing about the muslim experience in this country? when it comes to news media, they are lazy, white centric, and we can talk about this forever and ever and will continue to talk about this forever and ever as long as my voice is not considered an authority, and only an authority -- you know, like i why being enterer intiewed about the budget cuts, why am i not interviewed about planned parenthood. i'm a feminist and have strong opinions, but they don't come to me. unless we push it and point out its laziness, it will not change and comet to be above my ahead regardless if i'm an american citizen or not. >> it was great to have you on msnbc i must say. [applause] we'll see more of you based on what you just said. gr you tell them. >> i'm going to take it home.

donna? >> i have to agree with the pommists thus far. if you look at the statistics, of the 815 executive producers in broadcast media, 64 of them are african-american -- >> out of how many? >> 815. >> wow. >> 64 are african-american, 24 his painic, 13 are asian, 1 native american. >> what field is that? >> that's television broadcast, executive producers. looking at print, there's a survey with 900 papers across the country answer the survey. 50% of those had zero minorities in any management role in the companies. you look at that, i mean, we have an issue, i think everybody noted it already, it's a representation. when you don't have anyone in the room to bring up different viewpoints, different ways of looking at a story, stories that

may not be uncovered, then you miss this. many times behind the scenes, you have someone who is producing a show, and they are asking who do you know? right? they are looking for panelists, experts to come on a show, and they may not know that mona has expertise in a specific area. they they, she's egyptian, she can be on for this, but they don't know what she can represent. the problem is they're not people -- there's not representation in the room that can say i know someone who can fill this role and that role and this sort of group of individuals looks diverse. that also has to do with the stories that are told too; right? so once you have the representation, it has a significant influence on the actual content. that's shown on air, and i work for the root, and we are an online publication written, and most of the writers are

african-american. we write about news and politics and culture through an african-american lens, and it's interesting how many people come to our site that are hungry for the stories that are not being covered in the mass media. that's what we get day in and day out, and interestingly enough, we also get many -- nonminority people coming to the site that are looking at, looking for the same thing. they are like, oh, when the story hits that's big on the news, occasionally people come to the site because they want to hear what the black perspective is. we have to sort of move past where we have been. we've been talking about this story for years and years and years, and we have to begin to effect change. i'm on the business side of this industry, and when i look at it, you know, it's unfortunate when we look at some of what's going on in media today, it has a business implication; right?

so when you look at -- i'll move quickly to your glenn becks, the rush limbaugh's of the world -- >> donald trump. [laughter] >> the list is expansive. [laughter] >> let's put him on the list though. [laughter] >> when you look at this, you find unfortunately, racism sells; right? when you have people who are race baiting racism, however you frame it up, at the end of the day it actually does have, it does sell, and it's going to take us standing up and saying this is wrong. standing up to the advertisers plaicessing advertisements on the stations say we will not watch your programming, and we'll be vocal about what's going on in your program because it's toxic, not only to the individuals that are watching this, but more broadly to our entire community. >> launch of what you said as well as the other panelists. back to you, spike.

the idea of an apollo project will brought up and weaving in what was mentioned. what does that look like from your mind? >> not just one, but i think there should be many -- it's all about the money, and, again, we had discussions again and again and again, and it always comes down to money, and now there are enough people of color who have the capital to do it because there comes a point where, you know, matt morris talked about self-reliance, self-determination, and that -- i mean we got to have a multifacets program, so we should have apollo projects, independent stuff, but that

dpunt mean we -- doesn't mean we let hollywood and tv get off too. we have to work in all the different levels. speaking of hollywood and the muslims, hollywood is very, you say it in a little less degree, tv, a little bit, you're always going to have the bad guy. who was the first great so-called film, griffin's "birth of a nation," who was the bad guy? the blacks in the reconstruction, and then you go to the western. who was the bad guy? the -- that's why there's john ford and the great directors because all the hateful images he did of native american law and john wayne trying to fix up the last film, i forgot the name of it, but so then there's world war ii book out, it's the

nazis. we kick the nazi's ass, who is next? the russians. the union blows up. we need a bad guy. 9/11 happens, and boom. you look at every film out since 9/11, it's not the russians anymore, it's the terrorists. it's like muslim equals terrorist. you look at all these hollywood films, it comes down the new boogeyman is the muslim. >> this describes our culture what you described over time in >> no. the american people are being fed this stuff. they are being fed this stuff. i was thinking when france want to come in, the idiots say no longer french fries or french toast? freedom fries, freedom toast, and they are crazy.

[laughter] we're gullible as a people, and you tell the lie long enough and loud enough, people believe it. that's this whole donald trump thing. you know, he's going to keep pounding on it and pounding on it until you have half the country believing it that the president was not born as an more than citizen. >> why does he poll well? >> why what? >> why does trump poll well? >> that issue. it's gist on that issue alone. i mean, to thispoint, the birth issue is the father of the media, period. now, the media is reporting trump is a legitimate candidate. no, he can't be a legitimate candidate. they should have debunked a lot time ago. can you see walter reading

this? no. it's all play by play. that's news now. now in the poll, trump is second. it's just too much play by play. i think this is where the opportunity is, and i agree with spike's point. he did a film where you can't get on the bus, privately funded, and i worked with him on one. we can't privately fund the solution to this problem. that's part of it like he's saying. the apollo project has to be at the studio. a media company has the cut the tag. it's not a problem to throw money at. it's not poverty. we don't have the money to tell the stories, and you can't throw money at it and make a difference, but in the news, they are just on these standards. if there's an enterprising within the media companies if an african-american doesn't say,

hey, i'll be the standard for my cull cheer and report the news the way they did. you don't have that voice on television now, and i think there's an opportunity or would be an opportunity for african-americans to stand up or muslims. james, the right winger with planned parenthood, acorn, he's dismantling progressive organizations with a $600 camera and some access, and i think there's the same opportunity. you are telling me you can't go to ten tea party express stops to make the case this is a racist organization? you think there's not a time among those 100,000 people that say i don't care whether the birth thing is true or not? you don't think you can capture that on tape. they don't qair whether it's true or not and the news media on the birth issue should say that's a dead issue.

anybody who brings it up is ridiculous. [laughter] if you get a phone call and say hey, do you support donald trump, your answer should be no, you're an idiot. he's trying to hustle me out of the boat with a dead issue. no, i don't support him. somebody in the media should be saying that that as a journalist with the responsibility, i can't tell them this. >> you know, one person who has been saying it, and that's john stuart, and speaks to the state of just how miserable news has been. this is a dead word now. we think it means something, and it doesn't mean anything because the way that -- it's basically been so used that you can have donald trump speak this nonsense with the issue of park 51 and the community center and mosque near ground zero and john stuart said it's not on ground zero. it was a nonissue until people campaigned for the elections.

it was -- pamela geller was a nobody who had a lunatic blog that nobody read, and they came out of nowhere and put on news shows with serious people to start the rubbish of the islamization of the united states. if somebody said you speak nonsense, this is ridiculous, she would be deflated, but now she's an expert on hate. she's consistently one after another news show. she was -- she was speaking of fox news about a year and a half ago talking about the islamic community center and fox said it was a great idea, and pam speers this idea of the blood dripping mosque and the muslims are coming to take over and how babies and this community center

and it was taken seriously. what happened between what fox news had daisy on and it was a great idea to last summer and america goes crazy during the summer because you have nothing to think about. it's like forest fires everywhere, and last time it was muslims everywhere. you care about park 51 and this pam lunatic became this huge megastar. i do not understand, and then she invites people over from the netherlands, another hate monger, and she has this congregation of hate in new york whereas in the beginning if it was nipped in the bud, and she was told you are talking hate. she's free to talk hate, do it on your blog, but to talk with an expert to the fact, i was outside park 51 last summer doing sidewalk activism, and the people here for three weeks tell americans what they should know, and what i'm learning from my

citizenship examine is which the first amendment allows you the freedom of worship and expression. outside park 51, all these americans watching fox news and watching pam come to the community center and yell obscenities at us. somebody left a bag of dog poop outside the community center, and another nut case, this evangelist comes outside with a news crew to say he's there to save muse lism women because we need saving. outside the center is six muslim women shouting at him saying we don't need to be saved. it's a lunatic situation where this right wing evangelist is speaking on my behalf. >> what about the guys burning the quaran? >> he is a congregation of 12. [laughter]

>> equate that with the tv space, and he's a megachurch. >> last summer when there was nothing to report, they go to his church and turn him into a superhero. again, i'm not stepping on his right to do anything. >> you think he has the right to burn that in? >> he does. hehe has a choice. sarah palin on the right side come up with this crazy solution. they said if he doesn't burn it, you don't build the community center. that's why he has the right to burn it. the amendment givings him the right to burn, and the 4th amendment gives me the right to build this commune center. there's no kind of confession done on the first amendment here. you have to tell people that. you do not want to let go of your first amendment rights in order for people like donald trump and sarah palin to speak on your behalf. where is america?

i really want to know. >> don, before we get to you, spike, you have to leave in five minutes, and building on what you talked about is the responsibility of media; right, and putting the views out there. spike, where has media been responsible? what are some of the examples that we can hold up? >> i need some help. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> what? >> [inaudible] [laughter] >> film making, it can be hollywood examples or regard to news as we talked about, but where is the responsibility you've seen out there, that awareness? >> it's fleeting. >> it's that difficult? >> well, we're being overrun by

garbage on television, and it's selling, and especially in this difficult economic times we live in, they are not just going to cut that loose when it's making money, but i just think that people in power, they really just got to come down and understand you have the responsibility because when you get your license from the fcc, there's a responsibility there, but i think that for many people it's profits over people. i think the best example was bp of the whole bp thing where people in the gulf states were sacrificed for profits, and that's really what the country is built upon though. you look at the what happened to

the native americans and this stealing of people from africa -- that's what the country is really built on, you know, exploitation, and it's slicker now, it's glossier. sometimes it's harder to find, but, you know people pray it all the time, people kneel down to the altar of the al mighty dollar and they'll even put their mother on the corner for money. gr what's your -- >> what's your perspective of large money? the perspective of the media companies, does it squeeze out diverse voices? that's the argument that's being made out there. >> my whole thing is just a matter of huge media companies. i mean, it looks like a couple

years, three companies will own everything in the world. it's not just media. yiesm -- i mean, everything is just people buying this and buying that, and there's, you know, fewer places to go to because you got to unlock especially with film. there used to be a lot of independent houses, major stuff where you can go, you can try to get a film made. those companies are out of business. >> they are gone? >> gone. >> what's in the place now? >> the majors. >> how do they do that? >> my man said now they want movies. if it can't be done in 3-d. come on, we're people of color.

they don't make a black swan, fire, true grit, those films like $20-$35 million, but african-americans, it's hard to do, especially when denzel's not in it. >> or you. >> or me? no, no. don't put me in that. no, the thing it's not just african-americans, but i just think -- unless your spielberg, james cameron, tyler, it's hard to get a film made nowadays because the median range budget film they do not make anymore. they give you pennys or $20 million. >> last words. i know you have to hit to road to go to that -- [laughter]

>> woman with the hat? [laughter] >> i just think that we have to keep fighting, and we have to think about our past. think what oscar myrrh shell went through, same with nat king cole, many, many people, jim brown, people -- my man ossy davis, ruby dee, great, great battles have been won and sometimes likes like we're moving backwards, so we just got to, you know, keep going bard of the it's tough now. it's tough. >> spike lee, thank you for being here. i know you got to go. >> okay, thank you. [applause] >> donald, let's continue with you then, what are the examples, you said on the business side

that looked at that you would hold up as ones that have been responsible, media companies or filmmakers or writers, columnists, what have you seen out there in >> i think there's a number of examples of folks that have been responsible. i was thinking when spike told the story, one of my stories from last year was the turn around of how everyone came out and were attacking from the get-go, and at the moment they found out the information was incorrect, i enjoyed watching the unfolding and the news stations and the online publications and the print communications all coming back and actually apologizing for what they did, so i think, and i think after that point, they were responsible, granted they were very quick to accuse, but they were able to come back, andic that they gave her -- and i think they gave her the

air time to give her the amend to correct what they did incorrectly. that's one case that started bad, but turned good at least in terms of that particular story. i think on the business end as we look at this space it's kind of hard to see that; right? as i mentioned before, the dollars are tracking quite frequently with the sort of base level type of content, and the viewership, people are watching -- >> like what you were saying? >> similar police take. spike talked about reality tv moments ago. it's unfortunate, but inexpensive to produce, and people watch it, get sucked in, and the people who produce it

are introducing the people to be on the shows looking for points of tension, frequently racial tension, and they cast the stereotypical black woman who is loud and boisterous with all kinds of craziness going on with her life, casting her with someone else and want to see tension occur on television, and when that occurs, the ratings go up because we're tuning in, and our country, we continue to tune into this stuff, and i had these conversations with friends who will sit there and talk about just what happened on i won't name all the shows, but they talk about what happened on the shows, an the next sentence is about how awful media is today, and the fact of the matter is you have to begin to vote with your, you know, with your tv or with your newspaper choices or with your online choices. you have to determine what is, you know, what is sorpt of media

-- sort of media that is fairly representing of what's going on in our country and support those outlets and turn off the other wops because -- ones because until we do that, we're not going to see much of a change. i mean, it's -- many of these cases, it's a business decision and it is what drives ratings and the advertising dollars. >> will, reality tv show there; right? >> right. >> did quite well. >> yes. >> what is positive about that >> well, i just think it was in tune with the times.. ..

do have the diversity of people are looking for. but be an open door and people could be created and then they could tell different stories because ultimately asking the consumers because consumers want, they go to work all day or they go to school, they come home, they watch whatever is onw and they are not going to votegv with their feet, they just won't. i mean, you know, ultimately i think it's kind of the obligation of the media companies to say our goal is too try to be diverse. you want examples of responsetol will decompose or historical. nd when the civil rights movement is happening, the networks woul realized they didn't have anyan

black reporters so they hired some, somes of the early guys that havet been -- that's how they easily gulled discovered. i i remember the situation of max robinson and the most, the onlyy person they would talk to is max oobinson. and then a couple years later he was on the anchor desk.anchor i remember seeing bernard shaw w over in iraq with bombs in the background and then he came back and cnn really hasn't recovered from his departure because they don't have an evening news program when he was there and i don't think they realized what they had while he was there. we've told in 60 minutes they are trying out some guys it just became obvious they were not brimming barred revenue or mentoring somebody i think in the news rooms or even in the media companies it's become in the mud to talk about the

diversity because people are against goals and targets, etc.. if you don't plan for it it isn't going to happen. and that's what needs to happen within the news rooms and what happens with the entertainment companies. i want to have ten black films, start with that we are going to fund it. and then you can open the door and start taking pictures and they can't all be the same i don't want all my reality shows to be conflict and i want to see different slices of life and you say that's what we are buying and where the creative community essentially will be selling. >> i agree with what you're saying but i also believe that consumers and watchers and viewers do have to say and we just recently freedom of peace last week on race state inverses racism. it was the people who ran

talking about andrew, the same, but basically it changed and they decided they were going to start a position to be a competition to get rid of him on the "washington post" and the have i think it was 43,000 people that signed the petition, it raised the eyebrows of the folks the "washington post" and they actually did take a minute and start looking at andrew and they responded by saying he doesn't have racism in his heart. he's just priest beating. so, however you want to slice the birds and whatever you want to do with that the fact of the matter is that they have been looking at where to put him on the site and they have been responding in part to what color change to it, and i think that there is something to be said about the viewers and consumers taking an active role in change, and they can make a difference in doing this whether it is the

petitions with these types of things. i agree it's not going to happen as quickly as if you were to fund it from the top but i do believe there's a rule to be played. >> anything - ten we aren't even at this level where we can think what is ahead. so on a good day in the so-called established media like "the new york times" on a good day they would have a story in the way they did about six or seven months ago and the muslim women in the u.s. and every single one of them where the heads are off because that's what the muslim woman is to "the new york times" and the muslim women like me have to go okay at least they see a positive role models of the women but none of them look like myself and at least they are there's a that's why i'm talking about stopping at a disadvantage or about a month ago they had a huge magazine